Little By Little
by Rhianwen
Summary: Fifty one-sentence ficlets featuring Skwisgaar and Toki, written for the 1sentence community on LJ, using the Delta theme set.


#01 – Air

Skwisgaar doesn't particularly care when people call _him_ an airhead, because he knows for a fact that not one of them could even imagine doing what he does; but when an article describes Toki as _cute as a button, with a similar IQ_ , he's pissed, because the last thing Toki needs is justification for his wealth of insecurities – at least, justification that comes from anyone other than _him_.

#02 – Apple

When Toki finally gives up and goes to toss his stupid lovingly crafted fruit and cheese tray in the garbage (because _some_ idiots who put him in charge of snacks can't wrap their minds around healthy food), he finds Skwisgaar munching his way through the apple slices, fixing him with a glare that forbids comment.

#03 – Beginning

At first, he thinks that the overwhelming happiness when Skwisgaar accepted him into the band will be enough to last the rest of his life; as time goes by, and smiles and encouragement turn to scowls and belittlement, he thinks ruefully that it might have to be.

#04 – Bug

Toki's the kind of crazy person who can look at a snake, or a scorpion, or some kind of venomous lizard, and see _aww, cutes little babies_ , so Skwisgaar always thinks it's strange that he just can't deal with spiders.

#05 – Coffee

Of course Skwisgaar notices when Toki passes up his own skull mug to use one of his spares – he notices a lot more than he lets on when it comes to Toki – but it's not worth the trouble to shame him into stopping, because this crush, hero-worship, whatever it is, has been fading little by little for years now, and part of him wants to enjoy what remains.

#06 – Dark

It doesn't occur to Toki to expect any of the guys to bring up the things that came out about his childhood while they were putting together the Zazz Blammymataz comeback concert, and he's just as glad, because he's pretty sure they'd just mock the shit out of him; but when he finds the little nightlight in the shape of Skwisgaar's face and the attached note ( _to go with your coffee mug and keep away the dark and the spiders_ ), somehow it doesn't feel like mocking.

#07 – Despair

When the elevator first grinds to a halt and the power goes out, Skwisgaar groans in despair, because he can't think of anyone worse to be stuck in here with than Toki – which is why, when they're rescued an hour later, he's surprised to realize that he's been too distracted by a stream of chatter and ridiculous tangents to start feeling panicky and light-headed at the claustrophobic conditions.

#08 – Doors

But old habits aren't easily broken, and although he's just been laughing at Toki's plans for a kitty-cat petting zoo, he finds himself adopting a bored scowl the second the doors slide open.

#09 – Drink

"Ja, but everyone's a lightsweight when they tries to match Pickle drinks for drinks," Skwisgaar shrugs, quickly pulling Toki's hair back from his face as his lamentation about his shitty alcohol tolerance is interrupted by another round of dry heaving.

#10 – Duty

"Fucks dat, I don'ts owes her nothing!" Skwisgaar declares angrily, deleting his mother's voicemail reminding him that her birthday is coming up and a visit would make a wonderful gift; and Toki recalls noting vaguely through the haze of catatonic terror at his own parents' presence how much more interested Serveta Skwigelf seemed in Nathan's father than her own son, and can't help but agree.

#11 – Earth

On a whim, he bypasses the picnic table and settles into the grass next to Toki, and strikes up a competition to see who can find the most morbid things in the clouds.

#12 – End

"Oh, dat makes sense; you thinks you's gonna die, so when you doesn't, you goes to do all the shit someone else says you should," Skwisgaar scoffs when Toki tries to explain why it suddenly became so important to get married and start a family when he's never shown such inclination before; and he says nothing, because he doesn't know how to say that he has no ideas of his own on how to make his life meaningful when he's always fully expected to be dead by now.

#13 – Fall

It's not really surprising that Skwisgaar played flawlessly – twice – while plummeting from a fucking airplane, or that he approached skydiving the way he did everything else: with a guitar in hand; no, the truly amazing part is that he never even really got angry with Toki for deleting that recording session, or for trying clumsily to replace it instead of just coming clean right away.

#14 – Fire

"For fuck's sakes, Toki, you gots to stop thinkingks we's goings to fire you for everything; we don'ts puts people we don't wants in Dethklok just for the hells of it."

#15 – Flexible

Nathan can tell that Skwisgaar has been drinking tonight, because right now he's reminiscing fondly on a particularly limber groupie he had a couple nights ago, demonstrating her incredible flexibility by maneuvering a loudly protesting Toki into some bizarre sexual position.

#16 – Flying

Sometimes he dreams of flying, sailing on a magic carpet through a world of rainbows and giant talking gummy bears; but sometimes, his dreams are _really_ outlandish, like the one he had last night, where Skwisgaar _didn't_ delete and re-record most of his tracks for the new album.

#17 – Food

It isn't that Skwisgaar actually _wants_ any of that slop that Toki is eating; it's just that his yelps of annoyance when forkfuls start disappearing from his plate are really, really funny.

#18 – Foot

Skwisgaar kind of misses the days when he loomed a good foot over Toki, before a final growth spurt brought him that much closer to eye level.

#19 – Grave

Toki assumes that it was Nathan who insisted that they all come with him to lay his kitty cat to rest; Skwisgaar is happy to let him, because he doesn't feel like dealing with wide, adoring eyes, making him actually want to keep up the trend of being nice.

#20 – Green

It would be a lot easier to not get swept away by jealousy, if Skwisgaar didn't make it so absolutely clear that he considers anything less than his own level of skill to be essentially worthless.

#21 – Head

"At least it'll be real brutal when you falls and breaks you head open," Skwisgaar shrugs when he finds Toki trying to rollerskate down the up-escalator of the submarine's onboard mall because it apparently _takes too long_ to take off his skates, or even stand safely on the down-escalator.

#22 – Hollow

Skwisgaar has never thought to spell it out for Toki that his insistence that he wants to do more within the band would feel a lot less empty if he ever bothered to practice; Toki has never thought to point out that just because he's not practising in front of everyone, doesn't mean it isn't happening at all.

#23 – Honor

"Why the hell you wants to honour your moms when she lets all that shits happens to you?" Skwisgaar demands when he finds Toki agonizing over the perfect Christmas gift and justifying the effort with a bible verse that lost all meaning to him years ago.

#24 – Hope

Maybe working on that shitty nu metal band's shitty album with Murderface was good for Toki, because he's been sounding a lot less terrible than usual lately, and whether it was the extra responsibility thrown on him for that ill-fated side project, or the realization that there are limits to what the other guys will put up with, Skwisgaar hopes that it's made him take his role in the band a little more seriously.

#25 – Light

He's startled from a terrible nightmare by a knock on the door and a hesitant, "Skwisgaar, do you needs to borrows my you-nightlight?"

#26 – Lost

"Maybe you lost that guy what's your mom married, but you still gots a family here," Toki says, and just so that Skwisgaar doesn't think the sentiment came from him and disregard it as a result, hurries to add, "that's what Nathan says, anyway."

#27 – Metal

Skwisgaar feels a pinch of annoyance disturbingly similar to jealousy at Toki's endless rhapsodising over how _metal_ it was when Nathan fucked up that asshole's hands with a broken snowglobe; but that's stupid, because he's _not_ jealous, he just wishes he could have done something other than stand uselessly in the background.

#28 – New

Skwisgaar doesn't know why it bothers him so much when Toki looks outside the band for new friends, because the way it distracts him from seeking their attention all the time can only be a good thing.

#29 – Old

Of course, in this case, Toki's _new friend_ is the man that they brought him in to replace years ago, which might explain this growing sense of unease.

#30 – Peace

The recent lack of open hostility between him and Skwisgaar is only made better by the fact that they've found it by ganging up to repay Murderface prank for prank.

#31 – Poison

After all Toki's hard work poisoning public opinion against him with that fucking book, Skwisgaar thinks that it would be really nice to watch the little shit die a painful death; but then, when it looks like it's going to happen, his thoughts turn into a jumble of screaming panic, and he's going for Nathan's defibrillator and shouting at Toki to come back to him before he realizes that he's moving at all.

#32 – Pretty

When Skwisgaar catches himself eyeing up the far too appealing sight of Toki in shrunken pink underwear and that stupid ponytail, he thinks, panicked, that they _really_ need to get back to land.

#33- Rain

His first dazed thought once they've been herded onto the sub in the aftermath of the Revengencer attack on Cornickleson's funeral is that it must be raining; then he remembers that they're indoors, and he doesn't want to think about where the cooling drops on his face came from.

#34 – Regret

Toki thought that he knew the meaning of regret, but when he finally accepts that no one is coming for them, that Abigail is going to die down here with him because he couldn't manage to make himself indispensable to the band (to _Skwisgaar_ , because that's what it's always boiled down to for him), he realizes that he had no fucking _idea_.

#35 – Roses

Skwisgaar eyes the piles of flowers crammed into the corner of the hospital room, and then smiles smugly as he tucks the little teddy bear into the crook of the sleeping man's arm, because he's pretty sure Toki will appreciate it a lot more when he wakes up than a bunch of dumb roses.

#36 – Secrets

He knows that Abigail and Toki haven't disclosed everything that happened to them down there, and he knows that Nathan doesn't like it any better than he does; but then again, he hasn't been exactly forthcoming about the lurch of unfamiliar, terrifying emotion when Toki finally woke up, so maybe everyone is entitled to a few secrets.

#37 – Snakes

"Now you gots a littles friend what's you can hugs, and a littles friend what's can hugs you," Skwisgaar explains, winding the plushie snake around Toki like a scarf, tucking the toy's smiling face behind Deddy Bear to keep it in place.

#38 – Snow

He thought it was a nice idea, ordering that snow machine to bring the first snowfall of the year inside for Toki, since he's still stuck in a hospital bed, but the doctors loudly disagreed, so Skwisgaar improvises and brings snow cones instead.

#39 – Solid

They discovered by accident during an impromptu movie night that falling asleep curled around each other keeps not only Toki's nightmares at bay, but Skwisgaar's too; so they go with it, letting each other's warmth and solidity lull them into dreamless sleep night after night.

#40 – Spring

It's been at Skwisgaar's own insistence that Toki hasn't ventured too far from home on his own, so when he notices him fidgeting and bouncing in place like a spring-loaded toy, he takes pity on him (and the other guys) and drags him out for a long, _long_ walk.

#41 – Stable

"Ams you sure this is safe?" Toki asks anxiously as Skwisgaar urges him up onto the chair stacked on top of another chair to get something from the back of the top of Pickles' towering custom-built liquor cabinet.

#42 – Strange

"Well, _that_ was weirds," Skwisgaar announces flatly as they lay tangled and sweaty and aching, and Toki kind of forgets how to breathe until he clarifies that it was _good_ weird, not _bad_ weird.

#43 – Summer

They made plans to finally go to the water park on the first day of summer, and when he feels Toki's rapt attention on his state of undress, he scoffs, hiding a smile; he'll never understand how someone built like _that_ can stare at anyone else in such open admiration.

#44 – Taboo

They have an unspoken agreement not to talk about what they get up to on the nights they don't spend together; Toki's pretty sure that it's not physically possible for one person to be enough for Skwisgaar, but that doesn't mean he wants _details_.

#45 – Ugly

When that clown comes back into the picture, Skwisgaar is forced to confront some ugly things about his own nature; turns out, he really doesn't give a shit that they all owe the guy some gratitude for his part in Toki and Abigail's rescue, when he's monopolizing Toki's time like this.

#46 – War

It's almost a relief when they have their first really huge fight since he's been back, because now he knows that no matter how angry he makes Skwisgaar, anger no longer equals hatred, or disgust, or months of not speaking.

#47 – Water

Toki has been doing that stupid thing where he sneaks up and puts his hands over Skwisgaar's eyes with an ear-piercing trill of _guess who_ , so Skwisgaar thinks little of inviting himself into Toki's shower and murmuring it against his ear while he cups something notably lower than the eyes.

#48 – Welcome

"If you'd known I woulds be such a pains in the ass, would you has still lets me in the band?" Toki asks one night, and Skwisgaar doesn't even dignify such a dumb question with a reply, just gives him a look of flat disbelief and goes back to showing him a different technique for a section he's having trouble with.

#49 – Winter

This winter, on the day of the first snowfall, Toki brings snow cones to Skwisgaar, who's been in bed with the flu for the last couple days, and Skwisgaar thinks that as far as lame, sentimental traditions go, this one isn't all that bad.

#50 – Wood

But the same cannot be said for the candlelight dinner Toki sets up a few weeks later, particularly when he tries to light the candles with a flame thrower (something to do with making it romantic _and_ metal) and incinerates the entire table.


End file.
